Prague is in dire need of an autonomous space where people can express themselves freely without the constraints of our profit-driven society. Ever since the eviction of the Autonomous Social Centre Klinika in January of 2019, there has been no such space in the Czech capital. Meanwhile, Prague is plagued by thousands of empty, decaying buildings and thousands of AirBnB flats and corporate offices. The center of Prague has become an unlivable place for local free-minded people.

The collectif Opravdu Dobré Squaty (really good squats) was inspired by the story of Klinika and other previous Czech squats and social centers and aims to mount their own.  The members wanted to establish a new social center in a relatively central district of Prague. The building they had in mind is owned by foreign investors and has been empty since the 90s.

Sadly, the possibility of immediate eviction by the police is very real in the Czech Republic. The ODS already took this into account, and managed to squat the building for five hours before being evicted. Be that as it may, they regard their action as a succes. According to them, even the act of transforming a decaying building into a radical space for just one day is commendable given the current climate in Prague.

ODS wants a society based around solidarity in which human wellbeing is more important than money or property. It believes that creating autonomous islands in the current capitalist landscape is a first step in changing the world. In a space in where anyone can feel free to stay and express themselves without being discriminated in any way, people can challenge the current societal and cultural norms.

Europe’s migration policy is racist and deadly. The EU pours billions of euros into sending and preventing migrants into Europe, while deliberately keeping asylum centers and refugee camps in dire condition. Around the world, we see border walls being erected and the right to free movement, especially for those who need it most, drastically curtailed.

In the EU, the containment of migration implicates downright inhumane practices. Bulgaria uses EU money to imprison migrants in cages. Frontex conducts deadly and illegal pushbacks on the Mediterranean. Morocco drops migrants trying to enter Spain’s Melilla without a map or water in the Sahara. But the continent of universal human rights only talks about these rights when other countries do something wrong.

Amsterdam Light Festival

What better time to raise the hypocritical violations of the right to freedom of movement than during the Amsterdam Light Festival? While tourists and the Dutch gazed at the reassuring art in canal boats, Watch The Med held its international meeting weekend of the alarm phone group in early December. By attaching Led-light banners on the bridges of the Light route, Watch The Med demonstrated for those for whom a boat ride is definitely not a moment of relaxation and enjoyment, but a life-threatening and anxiety-inducing undertaking.

The action was well received by Light Festival visitors. Some boats sang the slogans on the banners, and others honked in solidarity. The organization of the festival, however, was less pleased. They let the police remove most banners from the route after a mere two hours.

Watch The Med

The alarm phone of Watch The Med takes emergency calls from migrant boats in the Mediterranean and informs the relevant coast guard to rescue them. Watch The Med documents all migrant emergencies on the militarized sea, including the number of people in distress, their exact location and whether the Coast Guard is making sufficient efforts to rescue the people.

Their essential work is on the edges of Fortress Europe. It is therefore all too easy for Europeans to know nothing about what is going on there, or to shrug their shoulders. With actions like these, Watch The Med brings the Mediterranean to the heart of Europe. Looking away is not an option. Stop the militarization of the Mediterranean. Let migrants through. A sea should not be a wall, but a bridge.

End Fossil: Occupy 

End Fossil: Occupy is a climate justice movement, occupying hundreds of schools and universities all over the world between September and December 2022. They will not give in until they achieve the end of the fossil fuel era!
Het Actiefonds supports several actions withing this movement and stands in solidarity with all occupation of End Fossil: Occupy. Het Actiefonds supported this action and the actions in the Netherlands.

Occupations in the Czech Republic

Univerzity Za Klima was founded in the spring of 2019 in response to the Fridays for
Future wave of high school climate strikes. They try to bring together students, members of the academic community and workers who are not indifferent to the future of the planet we live on. They see universities as important institutions that should set an example for social change and climate justice.

17 faculties in 11 universities were occupied from November 14th to November 17th 2022. The students, joinded by teachers, academics and other sympatisants demanded the university and the government to take concrete steps in the struggle against climate change as soon as possible in a time of multiple crisis.

During the occuption, alternative programs, workshops, lectures and film screenings were organised by the students, joined by professors who changed their courses into lectures about climate change. Sleeping quarters and an action kitchen were organised as well.

The actions took place in Prague, Brno, Ústí nad Labem, Hradec Králové and Olomouc. On the last day, the students organised a demonstration. In Brno, the students marched to the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University, to demand the end of the cooperation between the universtiy and Energetický a průmyslový holding (EPH), the largest energy group in Central Europe. In Prague, the students met with Prime Minister Petr Fiala and handed over their demands at the Government Office.

Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported this occupation and will continue to support the stuggle against climate change and stands in solidarity with all End Fossil: Occupy actions.

Geopolitics and big business

It is no secret that China has been working for years to tighten its grip on Southeast Asia. For example, it has already had three artificial islands built in the South China Sea in order to subsequently construct military bases on them. So too are the 11 dams China has been building in the Mekong since 2012. These barrages amount to an economic and ecological stranglehold which China has on South Asian economies and ecosystems.

Since the construction of the dams, the water level of the Mekong has plummeted. In 2019, the water level was lower than in the past 50 years. Add to this the effects of the climate crisis and you get a serious situation of persistent drought, flash floods and increasing poverty in the Mekong Delta. According to the Mekong River Commission, there are already 40 percent fewer fish in the river than a decade ago.

Thai sugar companies are taking the opportunity to buy up tracts of land in Thailand and Cambodia and grow large quantities of sugar on it. Backed up by foreign investors, these companies manage to turn the banks of the river into a monocultural wasteland from which only the company benefits.

SEVADA

Many villages and communities can no longer stand the drying up of the Mekong. Representatives from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand united in SEVANA and met in Bangkok this September and October. The Thai capital was holding the Mekong-ASEAN Environmental Week at the time, where politicians and lobbyists gathered to discuss plans for a sustainable future in Southeast Asia. SEVANA was also present to advocate for the rights of Mekong communities to have a say in the river’s future.

Het Actiefonds helped SEVANA host and accommodate the representatives of the Mekong communities. As a result, SEVANA managed to organize several activities and meetings where the communities could exchange information, as well as perform ceremonies on the river that officials and politicians attended too. Their presence was not beyond question, as the dam construction company had indicated in advance that they would not appreciate their attendance. Moreover, the company had distributed school supplies and clothes in the area where the ceremonies and actions in order to impede popular support for SEVANA.

Still, this does not deter the action group. Until the Mekong returns to its former state, they will continue to advocate an end to water dams, land expropriations and monoculture.

In 1995, nine Nigerian activists from Ogoni were sentenced to death for fighting against Shell’s drilling practices. Ogoni land was ravaged by oil spills and poor air quality, leaving residents in the area barely able to live.

Thanks to the dedication of Ogoni activists like Isaac Agbara, Shell was finally ordered to pay 45.9 billion naira (about 100 million euros, adjusted for inflation) in reparations to Ogoni land in 2021, thus putting an end to a 32-year-long court case.

Unexplained deaths

But history is in danger of repeating itself. The Kereken Boue community is currently sounding the alarm. This community lives on the southern border of Ogoniland. They report an inexplicable and disastrous decline in life in their villages. Crops dry out and shrivel, fruits fall from their trees before they are ripe, black spots wander in the air above their heads, the stench of hydrocarbon fills the air and rainfall discolors. But most disturbing is the sudden death of people and animals.

The consequences of this grim situation are increasing poverty due to crop failures, village abandonment, and psychological complaints due to premature loss of loved ones. But so far, no official or politician seems to even care what happens to the Kereken Boue.

Attention

The Kallop Humanitarian and Environmental center is therefore organizing demonstrations in Port Harcourt, the administrative town in the province, to make the plight of the Kereken Boue known to the authorities. Oil companies have been destroying lives in the area for decades, and no lawsuit seems to stop them from continuing to drill. So, with support from het Actiefonds, they traveled to Port Harcourt, armed with banners and posters. They will not stand by as their homes and hearths slowly turn black with fossil fuels.

They are demanding climate justice and an end to the fossil industry. If nothing happens within three months, they warn, they will be forced to turn to direct action, such as highway blockades.

Columbus Day

12 October used to be Columbus day in Bolivia, but since 2011 it has officially been called Decolonisation day (Día de la descolonisación). The Movimiento Maricas Bolivia marked the occasion with a performance next to the statue of Columbus in La Paz to underscore the lost indigenous sexual and gender identities. The performance was called ‘Memorial Abya Yala’, the memorial for the continent widely known as South and Middle America, and was seen by roughly 200 bystanders.

The performer, wrapped in a whipala characteristic for indigenous Bolivian culture, accused the bible and Hispanic colonists of imposing heterosexuality and gender binarism on the continent and wrote the names of the lost indigenous sexualities on a big map of Abya Yala. They also read a poem by Francisco Godoy Vega. Here is a fragment of the poem la violencia naturalizada de santiago y el indio pícaro, accompanied here with an english translation:

¿tiene una erótica evo morales?
¿tiene una erótica la chola o la mapuche?
¿dónde queda la memoria sexual de nuestras culturas ancestrales?
¿qué fue del sexo moche?
nuestros cuerpos son erotizados cuando
al blanco le da la gana
la dictadura colonial sobre el cuerpo indio
sobre el deseo indio
es la afrenta a nuestras comunidades
somos re-expuestxs y exotizadxs
nos follan cuando quieren lxs blancxs
en su poder universal

does Evo Morales have an erotic?
does the Chola or the Mapuche have an erotic?
Where is the sexual memory of our ancestral cultures?
what happened to Moche sex?
our bodies are eroticized when
the white man feels like it
the colonial dictatorship over the Indian body
over Indian desire
is the affront to our communities
we are re-exposed and exoticised
They fuck us when they want to, the whites
in their universal power

See the whole intervention here:

CASEC wants to abolish the use of single-use plastic products in Makeni, Sierra Leona. Since most of the plastic used in Makeni is not recyclable, lots of it ends up as litter on the streets and in waterways, or on illegal landfills, often on territories where people live. From time to time, these landfills are set on fire to clear space, spreading toxic smoke. The remaining plastic is – of course – not biodegradable and the toxic chemicals and microplastics that spread through the water and the soil damage crops and drinkable water, and can cause serious health problems for people, plants and animals.

Therefore, CASEC is campaigning on different levels of local society against the use of plastic. They focus on schools and food markets to raise awareness about the devastating impact of plastic products and inspire people to go plastic free. In addition, they also press local policy makers to take anti-single-use plastic measures, like better organizing the waste collection and recycling, lobbying for the production of biodegradable and recyclable plastics and moving the waste from illegal dump sites to official ones, creating healthier living environments. They equally hold talkshows on local TV to make the issue a hot topic.

CASEC is a Makeni NGO that addresses the disturbance of ecosystems at a local level, working on local solutions to protect the environment and all people living in and with the local ecosystems. CASEC also focusses on the sustainable management of natural resources, like local wood supplies, while helping communities to anticipate, cope and adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support CASEC in their campaigns for a healthier environment for all, because everyone deserves water without microplastics.

Corrupt President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo seems to have the wind in his sails. After two terms in office, his party says there is widespread satisfaction with his presidency in society and parliament. His coalition, meanwhile, includes seven parties, representing a total of 81 percent of parliament.

But Jokowi’s second term is coming to an end, and the Indonesian constitution states that no president may serve more than two terms. Not content with this, Jokowi is using the widespread support he enjoys to either postpone elections or amend the constitution to allow for a third term.

Jokowi’s party has one main argument for this constitutional amendment: the COVID pandemic deprived Jokowi of a few years of governance, so to speak, that he should be able to make up for. There are still major projects awaiting completion, including the relocation of the Indonesian capital to East Kalimantan, due to begin in 2024. This, of course, must be done under the president’s supervision.

Socialist Union

The Socialist Union (SU) knows that Jokowi’s support is mostly the fruit of corrupt deals and cronyism. For example, his ministers were shareholders in companies from which the Indonesian government bought PCR tests during the pandemic. According to the SU, Jokowi involves as many parties and politicians as possible in his projects so that the political class benefits from the president’s tenure.

Much of Jokowi’s argument rests on the fact that he would be very popular among the Indonesian people. The SU wants to show that none of that is true. They are organizing several mass demonstrations throughout the country. With the help of Het Actiefonds, they flyered and postered to warn of the upcoming coup.

The SU often struggles against the authoritarian tendencies of the Indonesian state. For example, this august they organized several demonstrations throughout the country to protest the criminalisation of communism by the government.

East Kalimantan

Jokowi announced three years ago that he would move the capital from Jakarta to East Kalimantan in Borneo.  The cost of the pharaonic project is modestly estimated by the government at $33 billion. The president wants to begin the move in 2024, which would require him to stay in power longer to oversee the operation.

The need to move comes mainly because of the great pressure on the capital, Jakarta. Ten million people now live in the city, plus another 20 million in its greater metropolitan area. Add to that the rising sea level and a water infrastructure that contributes to the sinking of the buildings, and you’re left with a ticking time bomb. Jakarta is slowly sinking into the ocean.

But that is not to say that moving the capital to Borneo is a logical solution. Indeed, it requires a colossal amount of housing construction to accommodate the one and a half million civil servants who must live there with their families. This puts even more pressure on the ecosystem on the already fledgling island, with no telling whether the plan will work. The amount of new housing will in all likelihood lead to a sink effect in East Kalimantan – just as is now the case in Jakarta.

But Jokowi can’t part with his pet project, and plans to bribe politicians and change the constitution to carry out his pharaonic project.

Climate Camp: for a just transition

Limity Jsme My organised many climate camps and direct actions in the past years, fighting against coal mines and fossil fuel plants in the Czech Republic. This year’s climate camp was focused not only on fossil fuels industries but also on just transition. In the Ostrava region, where the 5-day camp took place, the first coal mines recently closed, but with little justice for the locals during the transition process. Lots of mine workers lost their jobs and/or cheap energy supply, and most of the miner flats were privatized, resulting in social problems for local people. Addressing the social injustices, distraints and energy poverty  in the region and its interconnected ecological and social consequences, Limity Jsme My wants to use the example of Ostrava to show what happens when these kinds of big transformations take place without public involvement. During the camp, talks, workshops and collaborations with locals were organized, set on the principles of non-hierarchy, mutual care and sustainability.

Direct Action: blocking the Svoboda coke plant

The direct action that followed the camp took place in the Svoboda coke plant, the perfect example of the importance of just transition that adresses both social and ecological problems and their global implications. After the decline of mining in the region, hard coal started to be imported from abroad to the coke plant. The produced coke does not stay in the region, and thus does not provide energy for local people, but is exported to the United States. On top of that, the coke production is so air polluting that it makes people move away to live in a healthier environment. The region around the Svoboda plant is one of the places where the highest concentration of highly carcinogenic benzo(a)npyrene was found. Keeping this plant open can not be part of a just transition! This is why over a hundred people successfully blocked the production and the export of coke from the coke plant area for a day! You can watch the video here and see the pictures here.

Limity jsme my

Limity Jsme My is a horizontally organized activist organization that wants to end the mining and burning of coal in the Czech Republic, and supporting instead a socially just transition to renewables. To achieve this, they organized five climate camps and several direct actions. They also cooperate with other social movements and environmental organizations, both on the local, national and international level, as they are part of a broader global movement for climate justice.

Het Actiefonds is very proud to have supported this action and to support the climate justice movement in general! Because we all deserve a healthy place to live, wherever we live.

Everywhere in the Netherlands and Europe, old forests have to make way for the expansion of industrial areas and highways. A glaring example was the Sterrebos in Limburg, which was cut down this februari to allow the VDL Nedcar car factory to expand. After weeks of protest, the trees ultimately hit the ground.

Activists abroad often use forest occupations as a last resort when other campaigns have failed. For example, the Hambach forest has been the scene of a battle between climate activists and energy company RWE’s lignite mine for years. France’s various ZADs, most notably Notre-Dame-des-Landes, also show how a forest occupation can be an effective action strategy, even thwarting the construction of airports.

One may wonder how long it will take until there is a LelyZAD. In the Netherlands, the occupation of the Sterrebos was the first application of forest occupation on Dutch soil. And it won’t be the last. Consider, for example, Amelisweerd, a forest in Utrecht that is in danger of disappearing to allow the A27 to be widened. On ikgadeboomin.nl, you can already sign up to be a forest protector.

Climbing camp

Climbers 4 Climate recently organized a skillshare camp in Germany with support from Het Actiefonds. For a week, 70 forest protectors trained with climbing, building tree houses, rescue operations and hanging banners among the trees. Other practical skills were also covered, such as building composting toilets and maintaining an action kitchen.

In addition, there was plenty of room for reflection during camp. Climbing actions often still elicit macho behavior, and privilege able-bodied cis-men. Hence, climbing trainings and other workshops were held without men, and there were plenty of moments to address the reproduction of social power structures within the climate movement. In this way, the group built a sustainable and reliable climate movement that doesn’t leave you hanging.

Want to join too? Go to ikgadeboomin.nl!